Back to school with Billie Jean King: Trailblazer honored with statue at Cal State LA

LOS ANGELES—Wednesday, October 2 was the kind of warm and clear autumn day in California that naturally triggers optimism. The temperature was in the mid-‘80s, with a mild breeze and blue skies. The setting was California State University, Los Angeles, a public university located just east of downtown Los Angeles.

The tennis angle was a visit from that quintessential forward mover and one-time Cal State LA student, Billie Jean King. For King, the moment was concurrently significant and historic. This is how life goes these days for an 80-year-old global icon. Last week, it was announced that King would receive a Congressional Gold Medal. Title that grand achievement, Billie Jean Faces the Nation.

Call the afternoon at Cal State LA, Back to School with Billie Jean. King was present to unveil a statue of herself, created by Brian Hanlon, a prominent sculptor who’s also made sculptures of such notables as civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal.

The statue showcased King at the height of her powers, coiled to drive her superb backhand. Asked what the statue signified for her, King said, “There’s a sense of permanency, which is unbelievable . . . What really makes me happy is that I’m wearing what used to be called the ‘Madame Superstar’ dress that Ted Tinling made for me . . . and all the people that have helped me.”

Many others were on-hand, including the man who’d envisioned the statue and put the event together, Cal State LA’s executive director for intercollegiate athletics, Daryl Gross; women’s tennis coach Richard Gallien; president Berenecea Johnson Eanes; as well as the chancellor of the California State University system, Mildred Garcia. Also present were King’s wife, Ilana Kloss, and Hall of Famer Rosie Casals, King’s most frequent doubles partner and fellow member of the trailblazing “Original Nine” that in 1970 launched the first women’s professional tennis circuit.

Consider Cal State LA’s location on the map of King’s journey. The school is 15 miles north of Houghton Park, the venue in working class Long Beach where Billie Jean Moffitt first began to play tennis under the guidance of an instructor she continues to hold in her heart, Clyde Walker. The school is also ten miles east of the Los Angeles Tennis Club, the one-time center of the tennis universe, where the 12-year-old Moffitt first witnessed greatness up close—Althea Gibson, Rod Laver, and others—and vowed that becoming the world’s best tennis player would help her change the world.

Sandwiched around those two sets of tennis courts, Moffitt from 1961-‘64 had attended what was then called Los Angeles State College (the name changed in 1964). A full decade before the passage of Title IX, there were no college scholarships for women. Billie Jean held two jobs, one as a playground instructor at an elementary school, the other handing out athletic equipment at LA State.

Driving her burgundy 1950 Ford sedan from Long Beach each day, she loved life as an undergraduate. “The value of a good education has always been important to me, and I learned a great deal while I was on this campus,” King said in her speech. “You know why? I talked to all the professors, asking questions. I talked to students. I didn’t go to class as much as I should have, because I was so interested in everyone.”

Prior to the outdoor dedication ceremony, King had spoken inside the school’s gym to all of its varsity athletes, men and women gathered from Cal State LA’s tennis, golf, volleyball, track and field, soccer, basketball, and baseball teams. The talk was highly motivational, highlighted by three key King messages: relationships are everything, keep learning, and, be a problem-solver and an innovator.

Read More: BJK to be awarded historic Congressional Gold Medal

There’s a sense of permanency, which is unbelievable . . . What really makes me happy is that I’m wearing what used to be called the ‘Madame Superstar’ dress that Ted Tinling made for me . . . and all the people that have helped me. —Billie Jean King on seeing the statue unveiled

The statue is located just west of the gym. A few yards north are two other buildings near and dear to what Billie Jean King values: the campus bookstore and its library. The fourth floor of the library was where Billie Jean Moffitt, then a sophomore, first met a freshman named Larry King in the fall of 1962.

Larry pointed out to Billie Jean that as the seventh man on the tennis team, he was treated better than her, despite the fact that by that point, she had already twice won doubles titles at Wimbledon. As King wrote in her autobiography, All In, “I’ve always said it was Larry King who first made me a feminist, and it started that day.”

One can’t underestimate the upbeat nature of the world she occupied in those days. The early ‘60s constituted the California Dream at its zenith. With its highly affordable public school system the envy of the world and industries such as high technology just beginning to blossom, the sun-dappled Golden State became the most populous state in the Union in 1962. Traffic remained moderate. Campuses had yet to erupt in protest. Urban riots had not happened either.

Amid such sunshine, growth, and awareness of life’s possibilities, it was only natural for Billie Jean Moffitt to dream big throughout her childhood and during her years at LA State. “At that time my focus was on becoming number one in the world, and on changing our sport from amateur to professional,” said King. “We were getting 14 dollars a day. That had to end.”

On a Friday morning in November 1963, she woke up and marked her 20^th birthday. But a few hours later, as Billie Jean sat in a geology class, word came of tragedy. Larry told her that President John Kennedy had been shot and would likely soon die. “It was a horrible day,” said King. “We were all in the locker room, waiting and crying, and then over the loudspeaker, we heard that he’d passed.”

In one swift, terrible moment—the literal end of her teens—Billie Jean had seen how quickly dreams could be shattered. She knew there was work to be done. And, Southern California-raised net-rusher that Billie Jean was, it had to happen quickly.

A year later, in the fall of ’64, an Australian businessman named Bob Mitchell offered Billie Jean the chance to upgrade her game by spending several months training Down Under. The time had come to leave college. In 1965, she married Larry. By 1966, King was the world’s best tennis player. Seven years later, she founded the WTA and that September beat Bobby Riggs in the sociologically significant “Battle of the Sexes” match.

Now, precisely 60 years after the end of her college days, King closed her speech by announcing her intention to return to Cal State LA and at last earn a bachelor’s degree. Her intended major: history. The library where she’d met Larry is now named after John Kennedy. Having made enough history to fill volumes, King will study it on the campus where so much of her sensibility began to crystallize.

As the poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”